Between the respective Haunting of Hill House and that of Bly Manor, as well as the features Hush, Before I Wake and Gerald's Game, filmmaker Mike Flanagan wears the crown as the unofficial King of Netflix Horror. Though he doesn't appear to be heading back to the Haunting world anytime soon, Flanagan revealed the cast list for his upcoming adaptation of Christopher Pike's The Midnight Club, and it not only includes at least one Hill House vet, but also an essential scream queen from the Nightmare on Elm Street's franchise, and many more.
To put it simply, The Midnight Club centers on a group of terminally ill teenagers within the Rotterdam Home hospice. (No, it's not a multi-camera comedy.) The teens group together at midnight in order to tell scary and occasionally poignant stories, and they go on to promise each other that whoever ends up dying first is responsible for contacting the others from beyond the grave. Dun dun dunnn! And as announced by Mike Flanagan himself on Twitter, playing "the enigmatic doctor who runs this hospice" will be none other than Freddy Krueger's most trusted victim, Heather Langenkamp.
Heather Langenkamp starred in three different Nightmare films, including the 1984 original, 1987's A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and 1994's Wes Craven's New Nightmare. It's possible that the actress' new role within The Midnight Club will have callbacks to Dream Warriors, where she played a therapist intern within Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital. That's not exactly the same as being a nurse at a hospice, but it's working with soon-to-die kids within a medical facility, so it counts. Here's how Mike Flanagan announced the news on Twitter.
While waiting to see just how enigmatic Heather Langenkamp's Midnight Club nurse is, let's go over some of the other big names attached for supporting roles within The Midnight Club. We have Zack Gilford, the Friday Night Lights vet who garnered some horror clout in the features Devil's Due and The Purge: Anarchy; he also teamed with Mike Flanagan for his other impending Netflix horror series Midnight Mass, which will hopefully be out later in 2021. Also making the leap from Midnight Mass is Matt Biedel, an actor best known mainly for roles on other Netflix shows such as Altered Carbon, Narcos: Mexico and The Umbrella Academy.
Rounding out the supporting Midnight Club cast is Haunting of Hill House vet Samantha Sloyan, who also had noteworthy arcs on Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, and is also part of Midnight Mass's cast. There's a possible chance viewers will get to see other Hill House and Bly Manor stars in the Christopher Pike series, as Mike Flanagan also revealed that other cast members from his past projects will be appearing in guest-starring roles.
Now for the younger side of the Midnight Club cast, which includes a few newcomers. First, there's Igby Rigney and Annarah Shephard, both of whom will also be seen in Midnight Mass, because why not? Shephard's only other role is in the upcoming film Caged, while Rigney appeared in a Blue Bloods episode and in Mark Wahlberg's 2020 drama Joe Bell. Viewers can also look forward to seeing The Baby-Sitters Club actress Aya Furukawa, Irish TikTok star Ruth Codd, aspiring filmmaker Sauriyan Sapkota and model/Broadway actor William Chris Sumpter.
While Mike Flanagan didn't state it directly in his Twitter thread, The Midnight Club was previously reported to be taking an anthology approach to Christopher Pike's works, using the teen hospice storytellers as the wraparound plot to present Pike's novels as the stories being told. Here's hoping that's the case, since that would likely allow for the largest number of horror-friendly guest stars. Oh, and if they wanted to bring Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund, to the show to work alongside Heather Langenkamp, that would also be welcomed.
Stay tuned to find out when The Midnight Club will hit Netflix's schedule, and remember. Never. Sleep. Again. Unless you're like, really tired.
